News from EPI › Making health care worse

Making Health Care Worse

In an effort to supposedly improve health care and contains its costs, the Bush administration is pushing such proposals as high-deductible health insurance plans, health savings accounts, and reduced Medicare program spending. But a paper by EPI economists Elise Gould and Max Sawicky shows how those proposals do little to nothing at all in improving access to adequate health insurance for the 46 million uninsured Americans.

In a posted paper summary that is part of a larger article in the September/October edition of Challenge magazine, Gould and Sawicky show how the president’s proposals would do a poor job of reducing wasteful expenditures and may end up exacerbating them. Moreover, the Bush plan would force consumers to make spending decisions that may cause them to forgo care that saves money in the long run. The paper also touches on attacks made to employer-sponsored group health insurance plans and the principal federal programs of Medicare and Medicaid – programs that more evenly and fairly spread risk and future health-care costs across American health consumers than do the Bush proposals.

Sign up to stay informed

Track EPI on Twitter

Economic Policy Institute

EPI is an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States. EPI’s research helps policymakers, opinion leaders, advocates, journalists, and the public understand the bread-and-butter issues affecting ordinary Americans.